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March 12, 2007

LENTEN REFLECTIONS

It’s a beautifully clear and cool morning in downtown Phoenix. The hum and thumping of construction equipment is muffled by the big glass windows of the Fair Trade Café where I sit writing these words. If I look to the right, I see Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, a nearly century old building with several Palo Verde trees at the property edge – it’s quite stately and peaceful looking. However, if I look to the left, I watch construction traffic backed up for two blocks in either direction, construction equipment and several dozen workers moving through barricades, stacks of light rail track and other construction materials. Finally, there are the homeless, mostly lone individuals – some on old bikes weighed down with all their possessions as well as bottles and aluminum cans. As I am writing this, there is one elderly homeless woman struggling down the brick sidewalk with a very wobbly walker and, just now, refusing the assistance of a passer by. In all, quite a contrast: the calm of a spiritual center, the chaos of ongoing building, expanding, and acquiring, and, finally, the marginalized who appear removed and detached from it all.

It’s also nearly three weeks into Lent. And themes of lent as well as the view outside the café window call me back to the topic of simplicity. This time, however, I add the concepts of surrender and detachment. I hope I haven’t lost you by the mention of those two words. They are, at times, frightening I’ll admit. They often have very unpleasant connotations, especially for those of us growing up Catholic in the 50’s and 60’s. It’s a shame. They can really be quite pleasant – even calming – concepts when seen in their true light. They also shed light on the deeper, sometimes forgotten, meaning of the Lenten Season.

Thomas Merton said that the purpose of lent, with its call to surrender, detachment, and simplicity of heart and life, is to “lead us to a positive increase of spiritual energy and life.” And Diana Butler Bass recently stated, “Lent is not a program, but a way of being.” Here again we come to understand surrender, simplicity, and detachment, not as isolated acts confined to a 40-day period, but as “a way of being.” Still with me?

Now in case you’re thinking that I am about to suggest that we all live like the homeless persons I mentioned above, let me be very clear. No one should be homeless – especially in our society. And, as a psychologist, I would be concerned about anyone who chose the harsh conditions of homelessness simply for its own sake. But what I am saying is what Alan Jones says: “To possess nothing, this is your end, and it IS good news. This is the mysterious freedom of possessing nothing that we may truly possess the world.” This sense of detachment, simplicity, and surrender leads Jones to further state: “I tend to trust people more for their vulnerability than for their virtue.” I would add; those who recognize and accept their vulnerability rather than those who attempt to deny and mask it. Being vulnerable, surrendering to/accepting what is in our self and in the world, and being detached from the NEED for it all, this is the source of true peace.

So the movement toward simplicity, surrender, and detachment is really a movement toward personal freedom; a movement outward, rather than inward. It is a striving to get out of and give up what Richard Rohr calls the False Self which needs things, position, privilege, and power to feel somehow better (although it’s never enough). Rohr says we are to rest in the Real Self, which, in the end, really can possess nothing, but has everything in the God who is, as John Shelby Spong says, “the source of all life, all love, and all being.” Feeling a little better about this simplicity, detachment thing? My hope is that you might actually feel relief from an unnecessary but sadly and quite intentionally imposed burden of our Western society.

A few weeks ago, I was reading the New York Times (in this same café by the way) and was struck to the point of both anger and tears by two pictures on the same page in the front section. Fully two thirds of the page was covered with ads for “uber”-expensive diamonds, furs, and automobiles. Tucked in one corner of the same page was a picture of
a 2-year-old naked child crying and crawling on the ground amidst empty ramshackle buildings. Family and neighbors hastily fleeing from an advancing militia in a remote part of Africa had abandoned the child. What a stark difference! What a stark reminder of our human vulnerability! How sad to know it doesn’t have to be like that and that the solution and balance is certainly within the power of the worlds leading nations. And for me, the other pictures on the page demonstrate how far we are willing to go to mask our vulnerability and create a false sense of safety and security.

Am I advocating poverty for all? Certainly not! Do I believe we can live a reasonably comfortable life? Certainly! The problem, as I see it, is when we need possessions to look good and feel good about ourselves, to mask our sense of vulnerability, and when we feel less valuable and worthwhile without all these things. What happens as a result is mass consumption, over consumption, unending consumption for consumption sake because it gives us the illusion that we are less vulnerable, more in control, more worthwhile. Wrong! The more we have and acquire, the more we are vulnerable, the more we have to lose. And we spend more time protecting and defending what we have and we watch with suspicion those who might pose a threat to our “stuff.” And, tragically, in order to protect and defend our possessions and our security, we conspire with powers and principles that reject the core message of the one who’s life, death, and resurrection we are called to contemplate during Lent.

My point is that we should neither be dirt poor nor “uber,” -in your face-wealthy (recent comments by some corporate moguls about their “right” to the latter not withstanding). St. Thomas Aquinas reminded us “in mediat virtutem” – virtue lies in the middle!

So simplicity, surrender, and detachment are not about what we own as much as how attached with are and how much we need our possessions, our “stuff,” to feel better about ourselves – to value ourselves and to avoid our vulnerability. Simplicity, surrender, and detachment are, then, more about awareness that we are part of a whole – something far beyond our selves. Therefore, I believe our focus should be the greater human family, not the individual as we are taught in Western society – especially our American culture.

So perhaps we can dispense with the giving up of meat, beer, soda, or whatever similar resolutions become the focus of our Lenten practice, as if these had any impact on the world around us whatsoever. Instead let’s focus on “giving up” the false self that wants, needs, desires, and has to have to feel better. Perhaps we can also dispense with feeling shame and guilt for “causing” Jesus’ crucifixion and focus instead on the message of the sacred, the Divine, among us – a message he died proclaiming. Perhaps this shame and guilt drive a lot of the need to feel loved and worthwhile the fuels consumerism. Perhaps, in the end, we will see the call to detachment and simplicity not as an isolated 40-day period from which we joyfully retreat at Easter, but embrace it as a challenge to let go of the false sense of self. In this way we can live freely, open to the call to full participation in the kingdom of God among us – a kingdom of justice and peace – the core message proclaimed by the life and ministry of Jesus.

To be detached, to live simply, to accept the vulnerability that we often try to mask or deny is to live the gospel. To believe that the only reason Jesus died was because we are such wretches is to dismiss ourselves (often with some relief and justification) from the true work to which we are called – the work of justice and peace for all people.

I believe that some of the themes from the scripture readings so far this Lent support what I’ve tried to describe about. “Let your hearts be broken” - (vulnerable, detached). “Come back to me with all your heart” - (get out of the false self, come back to the whole, the God of life, love, and being present in all things). “Now is the favorable time!” Not just the “Now” of lent, but every “Now” of our lives……….. And most clearly, the three temptations of Christ really bring the theme home. The misuse/abuse of power, prestige, and religious influence are to be rejected thoroughly.

The scene outside the café hasn’t changed much in the last couple of hours, except for the movement of shadows and light across the front of the café, the cathedral, and the street scene. Other homeless have appeared as well. I am, however, aware that during these three hours 5200 children in this world have died of hunger, nearly 1000 people have died of AIDS, and it is estimated that twice that many children have become orphans as a result. In this last three hours, thousands have died as a result of war, lack of drinking water, lack of basic medicines, and curable diseases. And, during this same time, our environment has gotten a little more damaged and threatening.

Somehow, in light of all this, giving up chocolate, soda, etc., - while a tempting alternative to the real challenge of lent to see simplicity and detachment as a “way of being” - just doesn’t seem to cut it?